1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates generally to a voice communication system, and in particular to a voice communication system configured over an IP phone system.
2. The Prior Arts
Currently, with the development of real-time communication systems such as Microsoft® Instant Messenger, GOOGLE™ TALK, QQ™, MSN®, or ICQ® or similar software, in addition to real-time text communication, voice communication software is also developed, and especially Skype™, which utilizing P2P, is one of the fastest developing among these software.
Although these IP phones have the advantages of being toll free and having improving communication quality, but their user groups are only focused on internet users. To those who only know how to use traditional telephones, it remains difficult for them to use the IP phone. Consequently, the development of the IP phone has entered into a new arena, where those that are not proficient at using computers and Internet are to be enabled to make better use of the benefits brought together by the IP phone.
Conventionally, most of the integrations of the traditional telephone and the IP phone are still not separated from the computer and the operation of computers. In other words, they are merely connecting the telephone with the computer through a USB interface, where the answering and dialing of the telephone remains to be operated through the computer. Another kind of IP phone, although could be used as a typical telephone, it can only be used to communicate with another IP phone, and cannot be integrated into all other Internet phone systems, such as, for example, the calling of Skype™ users.
To enable the IP phone and the traditional analog telephone to communicate with each other, the “SkypeOut” function has been developed under the Skype™ system, which allows the IP phone to communicate with destination analog telephones through the existing analog telephone systems. However, this exchange method has to be cooperated with the local network provider, and the voice communication also must be transferred to analog telephone devices through the telecommunication equipment and the lines of local telecommunication providers, thus specific necessary fees are being collected for the local network provider, and the corresponding expenses should naturally be distributed among the users. Irrespective of whether the SkypeOut function is to charge a fee or not, it is still impossible for one using the traditional analog telephone device to call a Skype™ user using an IP phone.
Since traditional analog telephone only provides numeric keys, in which the IP phone account with the English or Chinese characters could not be entered into the IP phone; therefore, this problem must be solved first so that it is possible for the traditional analog telephone to communicate with the IP phone.
To completely bypass the usage of the traditional local analog telephone network, and to also enable the IP phone and the analog telephone to communicate with each other, it has been described. In this prior art which mainly utilizes conversion between the telephone number and the IP phone dialing code, thus not only overcoming the problem of telephones only being capable of providing numerical keys, but also complete voice communication is achieved through the IP phone or IP telephony system.
However, in the aforementioned reference patent, the conversion table of telephone number and IP phone dialing code is respectively saved at the local end (i.e. placed along with the telephone device located in a particular office or home), so that the corresponding data could not be shared properly. Moreover, in a case where the analog telephone device is an extension telephone that is connected to a Private Automatic Branch Exchange (PABX), the aforementioned prior art could also not be used.
Generally, even when enterprises were to apply for as much as ten telephone lines, they would only publish one telephone number as public representation. So if using an IP phone conversion box utilizing the technology of the above-mentioned prior art, while it is possible to establish a call after the extension number is pressed (in actuality, it is likely that the establishing of a initial connection could be deemed difficult), but if the ten lines were to be busy at the same time, the lacking of appropriate process handling mechanism of the technology described in the prior art could easily lead to the paralysis of the whole system.